Monday, August 24, 2015

Straight Outta Compton

Directed by F. Gary Grey

A review of the film

This
past weekend Judi and I saw the film Straight
Outta Compton.I had just finished
an eight-hour shift at work, and seeing a film after work usually begins to put
me to sleep.This film is two and
one-half hours long, but I stayed wide-awake and was even energized at the end.

What
is so compelling about this film?First
we can look at the story.

The plot

Straight Outta Compton is the story of
the rap group NWA (N-word With an Attitude).We see how the members of this group, raised in Compton, California, saw
how their was little chance of escaping the violence surrounding them where
they lived.Between the gangs and the
police, just attempting to live one’s life was a constant struggle.

Dr.
Dre had a talent for imagining the rhythms and teamed with Ice Cube who wrote
the lyrics to their music.Easy-E had
been a drug dealer and supplied the early financing for the group.Dr. Dre taught Easy-E how to use his voice on
their songs and he became a leading vocalist.

Then,
we see how a club owner, as well as record company executives found the music
of NWA to be repulsive.They all saw how
this music was immensely popular with young people, but apparently were
intimidated by the raw anger and rage expressed in the songs.They were especially intimidated by the NWA
song, F____ the Police.

Eventually
the NWA became immensely popular and the group members are suddenly
wealthy.However, their wealth in
compromised by various promoters who care more about money than the welfare of
the performers.

Those
who survive these obstacles, learn how to forge their own identities and gain
vast quantities of wealth in the process.

James Baldwin

In
order to gain a better perspective to this film, I looked at some of the
speeches and writings of James Baldwin who was one of the most profound writers
in the history of this country.When we
see how the members of NWA experienced brutality from police officers we might think
about the following passage by James Baldwin.

“One
did not have to be very bright to realize how little one could do to change
one’s situation; one did not have to be abnormally sensitive to be worn down to
a cutting edge by the incessant and gratuitous humiliation and danger one
encountered every working day, all day long.The humiliation did not apply merely to working days, or workers; I was
thirteen and was crossing Fifth Avenue on my way to the Forty-second Street
library, and the cop in the middle of the street muttered as I passed him, “Why
don’t you niggers stay uptown where you belong?”When I was ten, and didn’t look, certainly,
any older, two policemen amused themselves with me by frisking me, making comic
(and terrifying) speculations concerning my ancestry and probable sexual
prowess, and for good measure, leaving me flat on my back in one of Harlem’s
empty lots.Just before and then during
the Second World War, many of my friends fled into the service, all to be
changed there, and rarely for the better, many to be ruined, and many to
die.Others fled to other states and
cities––that is, to other ghettos.Some
went on wine or whisky or the needle, and are still on it.And others, like me fled into the church.”

Why
do the police brutalize Black people?Baldwin explains this in the following passages.

“A
mob cannot afford to doubt: that the Jews killed Christ or that niggers want to
rape their sisters or that anyone who fails to make it in the land of the free
and the home of the brave deserves to be wretched.But these ideas do not come from the
mob.They come from the state, which
creates and manipulates the mob.The
idea of black persons as property, for example, does not come from the
mob.It is not a spontaneous idea.It does not come from the people, who knew
better, who thought nothing of intermarriage until they were penalized for it:
this idea comes from the architects of the American States.These architects decided that the concept of
Property was more important––more real––than the possibilities of the human
being.”

“The
point of all this is that black men were brought here as a source of cheap
labor.They were indispensable to the
economy.In order to justify the fact
that men were treated as though they were animals, the white republic had to
brainwash itself into believing that they were indeed animals and deserved to be treated like
animals.Therefore it is almost
impossible for any Negro child to discover anything about his actual
history.The reason is that this
“animal,” once he suspects his own worth, once he starts believing that he is a
man, has begun to attack the entire power structure.This is why America has spent such a long
time keeping the Negro in his place.What I am trying to suggest to you is that it was not an accident, it
was not an act of God, it was not done by well-meaning people muddling into
something which they didn’t understand.It was a deliberate policy hammered into place in order to make money
from black flesh.And now, in 1963,
because we have never faced this fact, we are in intolerable trouble.”

The
year is 2015.Seeing the film Straight Outta Compton shows how
Baldwin’s words continue to ring true 52 years after they were written.

The difference between then and now

My
first year of high school was in 1967.This was the year of the rebellion in Newark as well as hundreds of
other cities in this country.The anger
that had built up over the years from the near constant humiliation of the
Black community crossed over to rage.

In
1968 this rage was further fueled by the assassination of Martin Luther
King.King had been an advocate of
non-violence and the government sent him to prison several times for his
efforts in support of the civil rights movement.

In
1968 King went to Memphis, Tennessee to support Black sanitation workers who
were on strike.Their principal slogan
was “I Am a Man.”King, who went to jail
in non-violent disobedience was shot down in cold blood.The Black community responded with rebellions
throughout the country.Clearly the
anger had continued to turn into rage.

Back
in those days it was difficult to make a living.However, the 1970’s were the highpoint in the
standard of living in this country.This
was the result of the fact that the unions and the civil rights movement forced
employers and the government to give workers a larger share of the wealth in
this country.

College
tuition in those days was a tiny fraction of what it is today.While the jobs of those days were difficult,
they weren’t very hard to come by.Working people had a chance to own a home, purchase a car, and send
their children to college.These weren’t
the “good old days,” but it was easier to make a living.

Today
every aspect of life is more expensive.This is a reflection of the fact that real wages have gone down in the
past forty years.This deteriorating
standard of living has hit the Black and Latino communities the hardest.

Yes,
the music of today is different from the music I grew up with.The Temptations, The Four Tops, and Aretha
Franklin have completely different musical styles from NWA.My opinion is that the music of NWA is an
expression of rage felt by young people in the Black community.This expression of rage comes in part from
the deteriorating living conditions people experience today.

In
1967 & 1968 many people were critical of the rebellions.However, the feeling of anger and rage were
only human responses to the conditions people experienced.

The
popularity of NWA also is an affirmation that the rage people feel is real and
not imaginary.NWA received considerable
support when they refused to be intimidated and performed their song F___ the Police.

Today
a change has taken place that is different from the past.Today there is a political movement called Black Lives Matter.This means that the rage people feel can
be channeled into real and meaningful political action.

One
dramatic moment in Straight Outta Compton
was about the televised beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police
officers.We saw how the members of NWA
reacted to the “not guilty” verdict for the officers who beat Rodney King.

Given
the context of this film we this verdict from a different perspective.This wasn’t just a gross miscarriage of
justice.This verdict demonstrated how
the government in this country had no intention of doing anything about the
routine brutality conducted by the police in the Black community.In spite of the fact that the members of NWA
had become millionaires, they felt the injustice of this decision
personally.

There
are those who argue that nothing will change in this country.I will end this review with another quotation
from James Baldwin that summarizes my thinking on this issue.

“Power,
then, which can have no morality itself, is yet dependent on human energy, on
the wills and desires of human beings.When power translates itself into tyranny, it means that the principles
on which that power depended, and which were its justification, are bankrupt.When this happens, and it is happening now,
power can only be defended by thugs and mediocrities––and seas of blood.The representatives of the status quo are sickened and divided, and
dread looking into the eyes of their young; while the excluded begin to
realize, having endured everything, that they can endure everything.They
do not know the precise shape of the future, but they know that the future
belongs to them.They realize
this––paradoxically––by the failure of the moral energy of their oppressors and
begin, almost instinctively, to forge a new morality, to create the principals
on which a new world will be built.”

The
quotations of James Baldwin for this review were taken from his book The Price of the Ticket.

About Me

I am the author of the novel "Looking Back From 2101." My novel imagines a future world where poverty and discrimination are no longer a part of the human condition. My blog contains articles and poems that I've written over the years. Many of my poems are biographies of historical figures who I have found to be inspiring.